Check List for Finding an Online Reputation Management Company

Some companies that promote online reputation management do not have the technical knowledge nor the ability to help influence search results and end up causing more harm. A good online reputation management company can easily answer all of the following:

Do they have a physical address?

Do they have a direct number and contact person that will work with you throughout the campaign?

Have they been in business more than a year?

Does the company have good references?

Do they only employ white hat tactics?

Are they willing to show you an example of what they can do?

Do they address how they will build links?

Will all the assets they create or promote be under the full control of your company?

Check their Google rankings can they rank terms other than their own brand terms, the key to good online reputation management is excellent SEO skills if the company you are talking to cannot rank their own site you need to ask them why. There are only 10 spots in the top 10 and there may ne a good valid reason that the company has not focussed on ranking for certain keywords follow your instinct if sounds genuine then it may be. They may not focus on thier own site rankings but may be able to show you rankings for their clients instead.

Pick up references, if the company cannot provide you with references then walk away. You cannot afford to do this over.

If you answer ‘No’ to any of these questions, you may need to look for another company to manage your online reputation management campaign. Your company’s reputation is worth the time it takes to find the right match.

I did not realize, researching an ORM company was so involved. It is good advice to ask ORM companies if they only use White Hat tactics and if their site ranks. If an ORM company cannot rank their own site, something is wrong.

Building links is important. It is also important to have good references. It is a good idea to ask the SEO company to provide references from companies that mirror your own in terms of size, revenue, employees, online presence, etc., to avoid false impressions.

Any real reputation management company can not show you a reference as they use confidentially agreements with all clients. Even Reputation Defenders do this with their clients. Now you might see Testimonials on Reputation Defenders site, but they also sell monitoring services and people do leave testimonials for those services.

There are a lot of reputation management companies that show testimonials, yet it only gives a first name and last name initial, and only lists the type of business, not the businesses name. How can you know these are real ?

If the testimonials were of full name and business name then that would show up in the search results for that business, because a real reputation management company is a good SEO company, so anything on their pages will rank well thus ranking the testimonials. That would make people looking for the brand think what is this business hiding ?

Another thing, looking at their rankings might not be the best factor. This is because you do not know if the reputation management company has recently started to target a new keyword to rank higher for, but you see it on page 4, when they just changed it 3 days before you ever went on their site. So that would make you think wow they can not do anything at all. When they can, but you are looking at them adding to what they rank for, and you see it as low rankings = warning.

Just my opinion based on my experience and joint venture experience with different reputation management companies.

We do offer new prospects references of real clients. Our clients are very happy with our work and are happy to help us get new business. We do not publish publicly as you point out we have confidentiality agreements but we have never had an issue getting permission from existing clients to be contacted by a prospect for a reference. I tell all prospects that I speak to whether they end up working with us or not to always pick up references from any SEO company they work. If the company tells them they cannot provide references because of confidentiality I tell them to walk. If they have a good relationship with their clients and are getting results it should never be an issue.